The Room
by vashsunglasses
Summary: Hell can be more than a spiritual concept. Horror Fic. One Shot. Rated M for Gore and Psychological Terror.


**The Room**

The plan was simple. Get in, blow up the Foot's new doomsday machine, and get out without getting killed or caught. So simple that of course it all went wrong. Michelangelo found himself separated from his brothers only minutes after they stormed the building. In his desperation to escape the unending swarms of ninjas he had broken the cover off of a ventilation shaft and climbed in, crawling into the dark recesses as quickly as he could until the slithering sound of his pursuers could no longer be heard.

"This is the objective," April had pronounced earlier that day as they stood around her computer, "the machine should be on the 39th floor according to these schematics."

Donatello spoke up, "The trick is getting to that floor. Once we're there it shouldn't be too hard to plant the explosive device April and I have designed. Our intelligence reports that the 38th through 42nd floors are relatively free of troops. Because we won't be using conventional explosives we should be able to destroy the target without bringing the building down upon our heads."

Michelangelo frowned and raised his hand, "Are we sure this is a good idea? I mean, you guys haven't tested this bomb of yours, and I've seen enough movies to know that that's usually a bad thing."

Donny rolled his eyes at his younger brother dismissively, "We've run repeated simulations Mikey, it'll be fine. We have to do it this way because it means we can prevent the kind of Foot casualties that a regular explosive would create."

April nodded and continued the lecture, "After the device is planted you will have a five minute window to escape the area using the service elevator on the north side of the room. The steel-lined shaft will also afford extra protection from the explosion created by the device."

He didn't know where his brothers were, but he knew where they would be in the not too distant future. He was on the right floor, he just needed to find the right room. There was no way his brothers would set off the explosives now that they knew this section of the building was crawling with Foot. There was no way that Donnie would be so careless with an untested explosive, right? He took a deep breath to calm himself and turned the corner of the shaft.

He began to feel a breeze flowing through the shaft from directly ahead. Then it wasn't a breeze anymore, it was a gust. And the tunnel was no longer dark but lit by an eerie red glow. And the gust became a gale. And that's when the screams began. Terrible screams that unlocked his nervous system and sent him sprawling face first into the metal that wasn't cold any longer. It was burning. He turned onto his side and jammed his hands against his ears, but he couldn't block the sound of the screams and-

Silence. Silence and heat and he was shaking so hard that he thought he would come apart. He shrieked so loudly and so suddenly that he startled himself, slamming his shell against the wall of the shaft at his back in a loud crack that made him shriek again. For an endless moment he could only lay there sprawled trying to recapture the breath that fought against his lungs. And a nameless, voiceless, wordless urge rose up in him: he wanted to be with his brothers. He was still trembling as he shifted back up onto his hands and knees and began crawling forward once more. The elevator shaft was shielded. Even if the bomb had gone off, and it must have been the bomb what else could it have been? Even if the bomb had gone off the shaft shouldn't be damaged.

There was a dim light up ahead and he sped up faster and faster until the top of his head banged painfully against the grate and shot it out into the open space ahead with a pop and all Michelangelo could think was "Shouldn't that have been secured onto the wall a little more tightly?" but then he lifted his head and saw what was before him.

He simultaneously saw two contradictory things. One was that the elevator doors were directly across the room about one hundred yards away from him and they were undamaged. "They were right after all," he thought, though it was distorted by his other thought of, "They were wrong after all," because the room was filled with a confusion of corpses and blood. He shifted, his hands slick with sweat and then he was tumbling from the shaft into the room and he closed his eyes as he fell.

Another shriek burst from his lips and his face was buried in something slimy and warm so that the shriek was muffled. His arms had landed to either side of his head and his hands slid through something thick and viscous and he couldn't find purchase and he couldn't lift his head and he gritted his teeth in a rictus of fear and kicked and pushed and kicked and pushed

And kicked and screamed.

He wouldn't open his eyes. Refused to open his eyes but he pushed the whatever-it-was he-didn't-want-to-think-about-it away from himself and sat up in the sudden ringing silence. His ears were ringing.

They were ringing and then he heard the whisper soft rasp of material against material to his right and all he could think all of a sudden was that the only thing that could possibly be worse than being in this room full of corpses... was if some of them were still alive. Alive... and and

Like THAT.

Alive but with limbs torn away and gaping holes in their chests and eyes burst from their sockets and he reached forward along the floor desperately with his hands, clearing a path and crawling forward in the nameless muck, trying not to recognize the shapes of the things he brushed with his knuckles.

He stopped thinking, stopped feeling, only acted mechanically, putting one hand in front of another. Bring his knees forward one at a time. Hyperventilating in time with his movements. And then he could feel the elevator doors before him, close enough to touch. He pressed his hands into the doors and then reached to the side, feeling for the call button. For an endless moment his hands met only smooth wall and panic choked his throat and then it was beneath his fingers and he pushed it, hearing the ping that echoed with relief that almost floored him. The doors opened and in the rush of fresh air he opened his eyes

And a hand closed around his ankle and he turned and all the skin was burned away from the hand and the arm and the face of the man staring at him without eyes. With a wordless grunt Michelangelo tried to pull back but the thing attached to his leg tightened its grip, spittle and bile and blood hacking from its mouth as it choked- hyuck hyuck hyuck hyuck hyuck hyuck

And his arms came down in an arc upon it and with a crack he hit it with his nunchucks again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again until his arms grew numb and it finally fell still. Its grip loosened and he pulled away from it into the elevator, sighing as the doors closed.

He pushed the Basement button and lay back onto the floor of the elevator as it began to descend. The first of many sobs bubbled up his throat as he curled into a ball and cried.

**The End**


End file.
